Northern Lights drilling confirms capacity for CO2 storage

The Northern Lights project has finished drilling operations for a CO2 injection well and a contingent injection well at the project’s CO2 storage licence holding in the North Sea.

The wells are located in the North Sea approximately 70 km west of Bergen, Norway, within the EL001 licence the Norwegian Government awarded to the Northern Lights project in January 2019. In 2020, Northern Lights drilled its first exploration well that confirmed the reservoir in the Johansen formation, located at a depth of 2,600 m, is suitable for safe and permanent CO2 storage.  

“We are pleased to announce the preliminary results from the drilling operations have confirmed a reservoir storage capacity sufficient for phase 1 and 2 of Northern Lights’ project, with at least 5M tonnes of CO2 per annum. To utilise this capacity, we will need to drill additional injection wells. The completion of these first drilling operations is an important step in the right direction”, Northern Lights managing director Børre Jacobsen said. 

The Transocean Enabler rig undertook the drilling work on the site, and operations were managed by Equinor on behalf of Northern Lights JV as operator.

Northern Lights is a joint venture between Equinor, Shell and TotalEnergies, and a major part of the Longship project – a full CCS value chain initiative supported by the Norwegian state.

While initial capacity is pegged at 1.5M tonnes of CO2 per year, this can be increased to more than 5M tonnes in later stages of development.